Home Healthcare company Portea Medical plans to expand to 100 cities in the next 18 months and will be hiring 4,000 people to support this expansion.

Vaibhav Tewari, CEO, Portea Medical, told BusinessLine that the growth in market demand and shift in consumer perception towards home healthcare has fuelled the company’s plans for expansion.

“We have added 12 cities in the last month and a half, to our existing footprint of 22 cities. Now, we are in 34 cities and look to be present in 50 cities by March 2022, and 100 cities by March 2023,” he said.

Aggressive expansion

During the pandemic, the number of corporates partnering with Portea to offer healthcare services to their employees also increased significantly. If 25–30 per cent of these corporate employees work from home, they would also look for healthcare service at their doorstep. The company’s expansion into more cities will help Portea to meet this rise in consumer demand across the country.

In expanding to these new cities, Portea will invest majorly in building an equipment inventory because they also offer medical equipment. The company will also be tying up with key hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to support the launch in new cities.

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Around 70 per cent of medical staff working with Portea are fully on payroll and get support from Portea in terms of operations, medical supervision, learning from subject matter experts, and the company’s own technology platform which they use to deliver services, collect medical records and make patient’s case files. The other 30 per cent medical staff is consultants from partner hospital and freelancers. Thus, the company will be hiring aggressively to support the expansion.

Last month, Portea Medical secured a commitment from the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for a $7.7 million local currency guarantee facility. Much of this investment will be used for the company’s current expansion and growth plans.

Connected devices

Portea also plans to offer connected devices and hybrid services to its customers.

“We are looking at offering connected-devices which could constantly monitor a patient’s vitals on an ongoing basis. So that in addition to medical staff, patients also have a connected device which can send the patients’ data to the back-end and help Portea support patients more effectively,” Tewari said.

Subscription services

Portea currently offers subscription-based services to its patients but the majority of their revenue comes from its pay-per-service model.

“We are seeing a lot more willingness to take on subscriptions, especially for those that have either chronic diseases or senior citizens who need continuous monitoring. We believe there is an opportunity to really grow the subscription model in the coming year, so that is one of the big focus areas,” said Meena Ganesh, Co-Founder, MD and Chair of Portea Medical.

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